When Wake Forest opens the 2010-11 basketball season, there will be nobody on the team who played for Skip Prosser.
Time moves on.
Coach Dino Gaudio, who succeeded the late Prosser in August of 2007, looked ahead after Saturday's 90-60 loss to Kentucky in the second round of the NCAA Tournament at what he expects to be a year of transition. The Deacons will lose four seniors: Ish Smith, L.D. Williams, Chas McFarland and David Weaver who, among them, played 464 games for Wake Forest.
There's a strong chance they'll also lose Al-Farouq Aminu, the team's leading scorer and rebounder who said he will huddle with his parents next week and decide whether to make himself available for the NBA draft. Gaudio has said that if Aminu stands to be among the first 15 players drafted, he should do so.
That would leave five scholarship players -- rising senior Gary Clark, rising juniors Tony Woods and Ty Walker and rising sophomores C.J. Harris and Ari Stewart.
It will be Gaudio's team, lock, stock and barrel. How successful it is will depend in large part on the immediate contributions that the Deacons receive from a recruiting class that, to date, features guards J.T. Terrell and Tony Chennault, wing Travis McKie, forward Melvin Tabb and forward/center Carson Derosiers.
"I think it will be a transitional period for us, obviously, with as many young kids coming in," Gaudio said. "But I'm excited about it. I'm looking forward to it."
Williams, who called the 2009-10 season one of the most rewarding experiences of his life, said he's looking forward to coming back and watching.
"There's so much potential," Williams said. "Ari and C.J., Ty came in a gave us good minutes, Gary is going to be a leader, whatever Farouq decides to do -- he's got a big decision on his hands -- and Tony, he'll be a beast next year in the conference. And the class we've got coming in.
"Man, if those guys work hard, the sky's the limit. They could very much be at the top of the ACC next year, but it depends on how hard they want to work."
Upon taking over, Gaudio assessed the program and saw an immediate need for better shooters and players with more polished ball-handling and passing skills. The team that closed the 2009-10 season at 20-11 ranked fourth in the ACC in field-goal defense (39 percent) and rebounding margin (plus 4.8 a game), but 10th in field-goal accuracy (43.4 percent) and dead last in 3-point accuracy (30.8 percent) and turnover margin (minus 1.45).
The three best long-range shooters -- Clark, Harris and Stewart -- are all expected back. Terrell is a prolific scorer who averaged close to 30 points a game over his final three high-school seasons. Chennault, a point guard from Philadelphia, was last week named by a selection committee as Pennsylvania's Gatorade Player of the Year. Derosiers, at 6-11, appears to have the potential to be the Deacons' best ball-handling and passing post player since Tim Duncan.
But the Deacons will miss the experience provided by Smith, Williams, McFarland and Weaver, and with experience comes the realization of how hard a player must work to excel in the ACC.
"I talked to the freshmen in the locker room and told them, ‘Know this feeling and know that you want to get back -- don't let up; know how hard you've got to work,' " Smith said after Saturday night's loss.
Harris said he and Stewart got the message.
"We've got to get a lot better, in every way," Harris said. "In the offseason we've got to get bigger, stronger, faster...
"In the offseason we're going to go at it hard. We're going to be two different players next year. We're going to be very much improved."
They'll need to be.
dcollins@wsjournal.com
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